Lovett, B. J., & Nelson, J. M. (2021). Systematic review: Educational accommodations for children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder . Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry , 60 (4), 448–457. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.07.891

In this literature review, the authors reported on several accommodations including extended time, human read aloud, small group administration, color contrast, and calculator.

Searches of electronic databases yielded 497 unique documents, with 68 meeting relevance and age range criteria, focusing on children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Publication dates of sources ranged from 1991 through 2021. The authors discussed the state and national (U.S.) policy context in elementary and secondary (K–12) settings, and it appeared that the studies were predominantly completed with U.S. participants, within U.S. schools, or with U.S. data sources. This summary emphasized information drawn from empirical research published in academic journals, dissertations, and reports from national sources available online.

Different studies included in this review had different dependent variables. Predominantly, academic content featured in studies included mathematics and reading, yet some studies focused on foreign (non-English) languages. Much of the literature reviewed used test scores or the percentage of items correct as the dependent variable.

The documents included in the literature review provided relevant information about the current legal framework supporting students' rights to accommodations, the prevalence of accommodations, their effectiveness, perceptions about accommodations, and proposals for improvement. Extended time was the most prevalent accommodation used to support children and adolescents with ADHD. This literature review showed that accommodations typically did not reveal benefits specific to students with ADHD. The exception to this is oral delivery accommodations, which have shown to benefit younger students with ADHD.